Public School System (Opinion)

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Since the majority of the people reading this are in middle school right now, you probably have an opinion on United States’ school system. So, is our school system terrible, or does it serve its purpose? I personally believe it has many flaws and needs to be changed, and I hope many of you agree and participate in my article in the comments below. If you don’t agree with me, however, I challenge you to write a paragraph explaining your reasoning.

Before I continue with this article, I wanted to know how many people agreed, disagreed, or thought I am talking madness! So, instead of just using the comments below, I made a poll for everyone to use and tell me their opinion. (Link at the bottom of the article.) On the poll, there is the “other” option so everyone can tell me why they feel this way. Thanks and let’s continue on with the article!

Let’s begin with some background information, and if this bores you, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Before the 1800s, if you wanted an education, your parents had to be able to afford a tutor. When America became independent from Britain, Thomas Jefferson argued that we should go to school, instead we kept it the same. In the 1840s, public schools became a small known thing around the states. Soon after, it became required for kids to go to elementary school. Later, everyone was allowed to attend school no matter what race, and that brings us to today where we question our school system.

Even though this is my opinion on the public school system, I’m still going to argue for both sides, starting with the pros. The first pro is it’s free, which is quite amazing. Decades ago, girls and minorities going to school was not heard of. Now here we are in America, where everyone can get an education for free. Another pro is every day we come to school, we as students know what to expect. Sit down in our seats and wait for the teacher’s directions. People could argue that if we change our system, students will be confused and not to know what to expect. It will take a long time for students to get used to the change, a change, might I add that no one has figured out.

Those are very strong pros, but I have some counter attacks. The fact that the American school system is free, is truly amazing, but that won’t change. Even if we do change the system, America stands strong with our school’s being free, so why change it now? We’re not going to.

Students do know what to expect, and that’s a problem. Life doesn’t tell us every morning of what to expect, life throws challenges at us every day, and if we aren’t teaching generations this, how will they survive when they live alone? Also a good point, no one really knows how this new “school system” will look, but we will figure something out. No one has come up with a strong idea because no one cares enough. If we go back to history, the Constitutional Convention was made in three months. If we got representatives to see that this is a problem, then we would have a solution, but we don’t.

What do you think, do you agree with me? Please tell me in the comments! I know I didn’t cover the pros of the public system, but I found this amazing website. So if you’re interested in the pros you should definitely read it. It had many amazing reasons for why we shouldn’t change it. Before I end this, what is your problem with our school system? I know I didn’t mention cons like stress, homework, and standardized tests, but please let me know what you think.

I also think that the system is very flawed because it teaches us to regurgitate information and basically forget about it after the test. Because it is only vocabulary and answering questions. If you don’t believe me, try to remember everything that they taught you in 3rd grade. The reason for all of this is that the material or the method is not engaging for these younger students. Because they are interested in different things, like sports or video games. So we should encourage the teachers to show the kids that learning can be fun, not by a poster or a slogan, but they should make things actually fun for the kids. But I know that most of the teachers are not able to do it because of their low salaries. So we should get the government to raise their salaries to a good amount! Then the teachers could do all of the extra things that they need to.

After all the government cannot do things like that because they’re spending too much time and money arguing about DOGS!